Two icons meet in Soul Rep Theatre Company’s staged reading of Madam Queen, one more notorious than the other. The play about 1920s Harlem numbers runner Stephanie St. Clair was written by late Dallas theater pioneer Dianne Tucker. Soul Rep is spending the next year developing the screenplay, Tucker’s final script, into a multidisciplinary stage production with help from a $10,000 TACA New Works grant.
St. Clair was born in Guadeloupe in the late 1800s. After immigrating to Montreal and then New York in the early 20th century, she became a political activist and racketeer. She took on the Mafia and corrupt police. At a time when it was difficult for African Americans to open bank accounts, St. Clair operated an alternate system called policy banking that included investments and gambling. She employed many Black residents of the city and was one of the country’s first Black female millionaires.
Tucker was born in Marshall, Texas, and moved with her family to Fort Worth in the early 1960s. She earned degrees from the University of North Texas and Southern Methodist University. In 1985, she founded Dallas Drama Company. It put on productions of her plays for a decade and helped train Soul Rep’s founders. Tucker was a mentor to the troupe, championing its work. Soul Rep, which has produced her work over the years, formed the same year Tucker’s company closed. She died of cancer on New Year’s Day of 2022.
“It was the last play she poured herself into,” Soul Rep co-founder Guinea Bennett-Price says of Madam Queen. She is directing the reading with co-founder Tonya Holloway. “As I screenwriter myself, I love how the story moves,” Holloway says. “It’s totally gripping.”
Details
April 26 at 2 p.m. at Sammons Center for the Arts, 3630 Harry Hines Blvd. Free. soulrep.org.
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